God Pictures in Korean Contexts: The Ownership and Meaning of Shaman Paintings

Shamans walking on knives, fairies riding on clouds, kings with dragon mounts: They are gods and they are paper images. Some are repulsed and unsettled by shaman paintings, some cannot stop collecting them, and some use them as sites of veneration. Laurel Kendall, Jongsung Yang, and Yul Soo Yoon explore what it is that makes a Korean shaman painting magical or sacred. How does a picture carry the trace of a god and can it ever be “just a painting” again? How have shaman paintings been revalued as art? Do artfulness and magic ever intersect? Does it matter, as a matter of market value, that the painting was once a sacred thing? Navigating the journey shaman paintings make from painters’ studios to shaman shrines to private collections and museums, the three authors deftly traverse the borderland between scholarly interests in the material dimension of religious practice and the circulation of art. Illustrated with sixty images in color and black and white, the book offers a new vantage point on “the social life of things.” This is not a story of a collecting West and a disposing rest; the primary collectors and commentators on Korean shaman paintings are South Koreans re-imagining their own past in light of their own modernist sensibility. It is a tale told with an awareness of both recent South Korean history and the problematic question of how the paintings are understood by different South Korean actors, most particularly the shamans and collectors who share a common language and sometimes meet face-to-face.

Arts & Photography

Kendall, Laurel

Yang, Jongsung

Yoon, Yul Soo

History & Criticism

University of Hawaii Press

Shamans walking on knives, fairies riding on clouds, kings with dragon mounts: They are gods and they are paper images. Some are repulsed and unsettled by shaman paintings, some cannot stop collecting them, and some use them as sites of veneration. Laurel Kendall, Jongsung Yang, and Yul Soo Yoon explore what it is that makes a Korean shaman painting magical or sacred. How does a picture carry the trace of a god and can it ever be “just a painting” again? How have shaman paintings been revalued as art? Do artfulness and magic ever intersect? Does it matter, as a matter of market value, that the painting was once a sacred thing? Navigating the journey shaman paintings make from painters’ studios to shaman shrines to private collections and museums, the three authors deftly traverse the borderland between scholarly interests in the material dimension of religious practice and the circulation of art. 
Illustrated with sixty images in color and black and white, the book offers a new vantage point on “the social life of things.” This is not a story of a collecting West and a disposing rest; the primary collectors and commentators on Korean shaman paintings are South Koreans re-imagining their own past in light of their own modernist sensibility. It is a tale told with an awareness of both recent South Korean history and the problematic question of how the paintings are understood by different South Korean actors, most particularly the shamans and collectors who share a common language and sometimes meet face-to-face.

Since old times, Koreans have grown up hearing about tigers, and they enjoyed talking about tigers. They produced paintings of tigers with magpies, which, in order to prevent the invasion of evil forces, and attached them to the walls or ceilings of their houses. Thus Korea has become a nation which boasts an abundance of unique paintings and tales about tigers. In Korea, the tiger has been called “Mountain King,” and hailed as the king of animals, and their image was usually pictured together with that of mountain gods, and as such came to occupy a large part of the heart of Koreans. In actuality, the magnificent figure of the tiger arouses the sympathy of the people, who admire the tiger for its outstanding morale. The sheer number of tigers in Korea, combined with the hearty Korean imagination, has rendered the tiger the single folk theme greater in Korea than in any other country, above all China and Japan in Northeast Asia, in terms of quantity. This book includes all aspects of real and imaginary tigers including extraordinary tiger paintings, beliefs and customs related to tigers, the ecology of tigers, Korean medical therapy and tigers, the literature on tigers, and proverbs related to tigers. Thus, this book can be called a “Tiger Almanac,” which contains a plethora of information on tigers. Twelve years after its publication in 1986, the “Year of the Tiger,” this book saw another “Year of the Tiger” in 1998. Kim Ho-geun (1943- ) majored in Korean literature at Yonsei University, and currently operates a book-editing company. Yoon Yul-soo (1947- ) lectures on Buddhist art at Dongguk University, and has published many books related to the subject. Yoon Yul-soo (1947- ) lectures on Buddhist art at Dongguk University, and has published many books related to the subject.

The Korean Tiger (Korean Edition)

History

Kim Ho-geun

Asia

Youlhwadang Publishers

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Yoon, Yul Soo. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Yoon, Yul Soo